Jack Encarnacao: Ode to a clown: Carlin was always in search of a line to cross

Thursday

Jun 26, 2008 at 12:01 AMJun 26, 2008 at 12:41 AM

George Carlin could change the way one looked at the world, not just for a night, but year upon year, decade upon decade.

Jack Encarnacao

In 1997, about a year after I discovered George Carlin, I referenced him in an essay I wrote for my high school English class. My teacher, a nice old lady, remembered the shaggy-haired hipster Carlin of the 70s, the person who portrayed “Al Sleet: The Hippy Dippy Weather Man,” a stoner who could only tell you one thing about tonight’s forecast: it would be dark.

I barely knew the Carlin she remembered, and I wondered if he had peaked then. It was right around the same era he uttered the famous “Seven Dirty Words” and earned himself footnotes in the history of American free speech.

Was I coming to Carlin too late? Did mainstream America ever bother to update their perception of Carlin, who by the 90s was just as apt to muse on abortion and suicide as he was about people reaching past the first few slices of bread to get to the “good bread”?

In revisiting Carlin’s work from decades past, beginning with the 1972 “FM & AM” album that went gold and won him a Grammy, I found a change in style, but not really in substance. His grasp of things crossed generations.

“You age, you grow, you season, you mature, your talent does, your craft does, your experiences all change you,” Carlin told me in an interview for The Patriot Ledger in 2006. “Nothing’s different about my approach to comedy, though. It’s all the same. I’m just somewhat better at it, and my voice is more of a strident voice than it was.”

Carlin, simply, was more than a comedian. There was a reason he was up for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which he will receive posthumously. Carlin was the closest thing our culture had to Twain, if Twain routinely dropped “f-bombs” for comedic emphasis.

“Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever,” Twain once wrote.

If anyone’s comedy ever fit that bill, it was George Carlin’s.

Carlin always seemed a step ahead in detecting the latest in human foibles. Three years ago, he unleashed a routine called “Modern Man,” where he skewered, in a poetic cadence, overly-motivated digital denizens.

Carlin, who died Sunday at the age of 71, would surprise, always punctuating diatribes with a thoughtful turn-of-phrase or insight. These would remind audiences they were listening to a performer who knew how to push every last one of their buttons. Carlin said he liked to find where the line was drawn, deliberately cross it, and make people happy that he did.

Perhaps I spent so much time with his material that I didn’t notice he was fading away. Carlin had three heart scares before his death, heavily abused cocaine in the 70s and recently grappled with Vicodin and alcohol addiction. When I met him in Brookline in 2004, I was a bit spooked at how aged he appeared, though that didn’t once cross my mind as I listened to him read from his third book to a packed theatre.

It’s disheartening that the New Yorker will never do another HBO special, never again joyously deconstruct the latest human foibles and trends in culture and speech. I’m not sure who we can turn to these days for the same fix.

But it’s unlikely that today’s fickle and carefully-packaged entertainment business will allow a stand-up comedian to rise to the stature Carlin did. Comedians are more confined than ever to how they can be pitched and what demographic they can hit.

“I’m not in this business that way, people don’t pitch me,” Carlin told me in 2006. “I’m a loner, man. I’m in this myself. I just need to figure things out, and then I go to people and say, ‘hey, want this?’”

Of course we did. Carlin could change the way one looked at the world, not just for a night, but year upon year, decade upon decade.

“This is a very, very flawed species,” Carlin told me in the 2006. “Individually, you’ll find people who can shine and be beautiful and they are the difference in their little circle. They’re an oasis in a sea of mediocrity. But they’ll never change anything.”

I didn’t have the gumption to tell him this then, but now it seems appropriate: George, you’re wrong. When it comes to how they view the world, you changed everything for many, many people.